The Rules of Backyard Cricket (18 page)

‘You take a walk down dere and I will troe dose fuckin stumps down,
mon
.'

I've never seen a man so serious. I offer Herro a weak little
you right mate?
and a concerned wave of a gloved hand. He's grunting his way back to his feet by then.

The next one clean bowls him, and he looks glad to go.

Federal's first spell is a mere six overs. Through a combination of good luck and careful strike manipulation, I weather it.

By the time he starts his second spell, I've cobbled together another sixty runs and we're a mere thirty-seven runs from victory. In the moments of stopped play, I've been sneaking the odd look at the scoreboard, the sequence of lit globes making the letters: KEEFE, D. Beside it, the triple columns say 170. The highest ever individual score in a Shield final between these two sides.

The sun has passed its angry peak and is now bathing the east side of the 'G in a soft yellow glow. The grandstands bury the outfield in deep shadow. Federal's been gone from my thoughts for an hour or so now, out fielding defensively on the boundary rope. There's nineteen overs left to bowl in the last session and we've got three wickets in hand. Nothing can, or should, go wrong. And even if it does, my ticket to Heathrow is booked, because no one can take these one hundred and seventy runs away from me.

So seeing big Feddo there at the end of his run-up is disconcerting but by no means alarming. He'll be tired by now. He's been in the field all day, a glowering presence under that big hat of his. For a guy with his destructive ability, the solitary wicket of Herro would be a disappointing return. For whatever reason of internal team politics, he's been under-used.

On reflection, I should've guessed these things might've added a little sting to Fed's bowling. Maybe my mind wanders ahead, to the press conference I'll give as man of the match, charming everyone with my insouciant one-liners. To the phone call I'll receive from the chairman of selectors, asking my size in caps. Maybe I can taste the first cold beer, less than an hour away. Who knows where my mind is.

But Federal Winston Collins is still very much here.

He streams in like he just finished a morning warm-up: momentum personified. As he rears into that delivery stride, his upper body is bathed in the golden light spearing through some empty exit in the grandstand. It flashes brilliantly on the gold chains around his neck, a blinding flash of light in the exact place I don't need it.

I pull away, bat raised.

It takes a long instant for Federal to realise what's happened. He half-releases the ball and it rolls away towards mid-off, as his momentum carries him down the pitch, winding his arms to regain balance. Finally he stops, standing with hands on hips about ten feet from me,
breathing hard. ‘What da
fuck
was that?'

The ump's moved from his position and is rushing down the pitch. ‘Darren, why did you pull away?' he asks.

‘Fed's chains,' I respond. ‘They caught the light. Couldn't see a thing.'

The ump looks from me to Federal, to the chains. Fed's fuming, but he says nothing. The Queenslanders are starting to gather, directing a bit of chat my way. Stuff about my mother. My poor, much maligned mother.

‘All right,' says the ump. ‘Let's get on with it, eh?'

I think about this for a moment, and balanced on the tiny fulcrum of that moment I make a decision that will change my life.

‘Tell him to take the bling off.'

Fed and the ump simultaneously stare at me in disbelief.

‘What?' they both say. Fed's taken two steps forward.

‘Ditch the chains, Fed.' I lean on the bat. Brother Wally would know this stance. ‘I'm not gonna have that happen again. Take 'em off.'

Fed takes three very quick steps forward, and suddenly he's towering above me, pointing a long finger deep between my eyes. ‘Don't you dare disrespect me, boy!' Several fielders have darted forward to grab him by the waist. ‘Don't you even
look
at me battyboy…I will fuck you up!'

‘Cool it Federal,' says the ump. ‘Darren, where's this light coming from?'

I point at the non-striker's stumps, which are now bathed in the heavenly glow. Over in the west, the sun is blazing through the exit halfway up the Ponsford Stand.

‘Pussy,' spits Fed. ‘Ain't never seen the sun?'

The ump wanders over to the square leg ump, who's been avoiding us all. They chat for a moment, then he returns.

‘Take them off, thanks Federal.'

Fed's eyes are wild now. He fumbles around his throat, searching for the clasps, and one by one he hands the chains to the ump. Someone throws him the ball and he allows it to smack into his palm. His eyes never leave me.

‘Gonna hurt you for this, little boy,' he whispers.

The urge to antagonise just gets stronger and stronger when these things happen to me. I'll never know why. So I wait until he's got all the way back to the end of his run, until he's turned, until I'm damn sure he's looking at me.

And I blow him a kiss.

Fed takes off at full speed from the first step, expressionless. I tap the bat as he runs; lift it as he leaps. He slams the ball hard into the turf—again, I can tell only because his body says he did—and it disappears. I'm inside its line of flight, because I've already decided before he bowls that a man this angry is incapable of feint: it'll be a bouncer. And it's important that you don't get a reputation for copping this sort of stuff. I have to hook him.

So in the part of that second when the ball is invisible, I'm rocking onto my back foot, tipping slightly to my left, beginning to pull the bat in a low-to-high arc that will take it past my nose. It's pure guesswork, based on Fed's usual pace, the state of the wicket and endless repetition of exactly this shot. If I'm out by an inch or two I can adjust. You sometimes see still photos of batsmen doing this, and they have their eyes closed. This is not evidence of an action reduced to forlorn hope. It is the point of total trust in the intimate choreography of the swing. Eyesight no longer matters. It will work, or it will not.

Then the ball reappears, and it's got awfully big.

It's where I thought it would be, but
so
much earlier than I'd calibrated the shot for—a mere instant from smashing into the grille of the helmet.

I jab the bat handle forwards at the ball. Two inches off the grille
of the helmet: I've managed to protect a wire cage with a leather glove. The idiocy of this is unanswerable. But then, reflexes are themselves unanswerable.

There's a sickening crunch and I know immediately that the ball's caught my thumb on the bat handle, and all sorts of destruction has taken place. For a moment, though, I'm suspended in that childlike state where I know the pain is coming like an avalanche but it's not here yet. I throw the bat and start hopping away from the crease. God knows why I'm hopping. I bend double, with the hand between my knees, straighten and look at the sky. Now it's here. Nothing will separate me from the planet-size pain, the death-metal screech, coming from inside that glove. I collapse and roll over onto my back, clutching the hand to my chest. People are starting to gather. Klausner, their new wicketkeeper, looks down at me with something like pity, something like vindication. We've been shitting each other for two days out here, and now I'm writhing on the grass, a victim of my own hubris. The crowd has roared somewhere beyond sight because the ball has reached the boundary. It was propelled there by seven millimetres of bone in my left thumb.

The team physio waddles out with his little bag of parlour tricks. Magic spray and reassurance is about all the wobbly tit has ever been good for. Sure enough, he undoes the Velcro cuff on the glove and pulls it away, ready to hit it with the aerosol. But as the glove slides back, he stops dead and drops the can. The long side of my thumb, just above the wrist, has deformed into a nauseating sac, with a pointed angle in it where some piece of bone has been forced outwards.
First metacarpal
, I will hear over and over. Looks like something from a horror movie. The end of the thumb is turning purple and the nail has been smashed and torn back. It's crowned with a comical tuft of
cotton wool from the inside of the glove's padding, like a fucked-up finger puppet. The crushed splinters of the thumbnail are spiked out of the pulp of the nail bed. The end of the thumb is already completely devoid of sensation and will remain that way for the rest of my days.

‘Ooh,' says the physio. ‘That's not good.' He's holding the hand as if it might try to escape. ‘We've got to get you off.'

He puts a hand on the small of my back and continues to carry the smashed hand carefully in front of himself. I shuffle forward obediently, no bat, one glove, muttered profanities. Our number-ten batsman is jogging out towards the middle. From the corner of my eye I see Federal calmly take his chains back from the ump and replace them around his neck.

I can hear scattered applause as I head up the concrete race to the rooms, where there's an unspoken tension between concern for me and concern for the game, now precariously balanced with two part-time batsmen at the crease and another thirty-three runs to find. I take an icepack and gingerly place it over the thumb, then slump into a seat at the big window, swatting the physio away like a blowie. Craig appears out of nowhere—he's managed a few times lately to scam his way into the rooms. I don't begrudge him doing it, but I do wonder sometimes at how porous these change rooms have become.

Craig plonks his arse down next to me. Through the haze of agony I see that today's monogrammed polo is brought to you by Werribee Precision Exhausts. He grabs the hand and examines it.

‘Fuck,' he says.

‘Yep.' There's blood dripping from the nail bed.

Craigo exhales loudly through his hairy nose and looks at his feet for a moment, then from side to side. ‘Bastard,' he says.

‘Yep,' I agree.

‘I can have his legs broken.'

‘
What
?'

‘Federal. I can have him fucked up. I know people.'

‘Jesus, Craigo.'

‘I can make it happen, completely untraceable.' He looks me deep in the eye. ‘No one does this to Darren Keefe.'

‘Mate,' I grunt, ‘that's a fucking terrible idea. Please don't do that.'

There's two ambulance officers marching into the place like they own it. Porous rooms, like I said. Craig tries to shield me but he gets two rubber-gloved hands on his man-boobs, and against his protests they shove him in a corner and drag me out.

It's a Rolando's fracture—comminuted fracture of the base of the first metacarpal…possible compromise of the nervous and vascular supply
.

This is what one tired-looking doctor is telling another one. He's maybe thirty, neat haircut, bony cheeks. They've given me something in a drip in the back of my other hand, something that's dulled me. The doctor's conscious I've been listening, and speaks in the exaggerated tones reserved for the simpleton.